Phil Schiller, Apple’s senior vice president of worldwide marketing, announces features of the new iPhone 8 at the Steve Jobs Theater on the new Apple campus on Tuesday, Sept. 12, 2017, in Cupertino, Calif. Apple has been sued in California and Illinois over steps it took to “throttle,” or slow down the performance of some older models of the iPhone.

Speed Limits: Apple certainly counted on its new iPhone 8, iPhone 8 Plus and iPhone X to give its sales a boost over the Christmas holiday. After all, few things look better when they are unwrapped on Christmas morning than a shiny new iPhone. (And with a starting price tag of between $699 and $999, those iPhones can make Apple’s quarterly sales look very shiny, too.)

We probably won’t get any detailed look into how well Apple’s Christmas iPhone sales went until the company gives its next quarterly report in a few weeks. In the meantime, we do know how some people feel about what they allege is Apple deliberately slowing down their older iPhones to get them to buy something new.

Well, bring out the lawyers. The first suits against Apple over the throttling issue have been filed. One of those, a lawsuit filed in Illinois that seeks class-action status, accuses Apple of violating that state’s laws by not notifying consumers that it would slow down the performance of their phones. Another suit, filed in Los Angeles, calls out Apple for instituting a policy that “was never requested or agreed upon.”

Sales Echo: It looks like Christmas was good to Amazon.

On Tuesday, Amazon said it sold “tens of millions” of its Echo devices, and that the company had its “biggest” Christmas ever, thanks in large part to the performance of its Echo products. Amazon singled out its Echo Dot device, as well as its Fire TV Stick with Alexa voice remote as the most-popular of all things sold across Amazon’s online site during the Christmas holiday season.

Now, we all have to take Amazon at its word. For a company claiming wild success from products that are voice activated, Amazon doesn’t like to say anything about anything unless it is absolutely necessary, and that holds true for divulging actual sales of Echo devices. And Amazon never has said, nor shown any desire to say, exactly how many Echo products it has sold.

Rex Crum is the senior web editor for the business section for The Mercury News and Bay Area News Group. He also writes about business and technology for the publications' print and web editions, and has covered business and technology for nearly two decades. A native of Seattle, he remains a diehard Seahawks and Mariners fan and is imparting his fandom to his Oakland-native wife and two young daughters.

A planned employment ban for an estimated 100,000 spouses of H-1B visa holders has moved ahead with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security sending the proposed new rule to the Office of Management and Budget.